We have an OSX machine (10.5.8) that we want to back up to an existing NAS. We cannot use Time Machine, so are looking for the Acronis of Mac, so to speak. We also do not want to back up to the cloud.

We want the full suite of capabilities—always running in the background, complete system restore on demand (i.e. if our Mac gets fried, we can rebuild to the last backup, software and all), recovery disk, autonomously managed space, integrity checks, etc.

It also has to have a very good/easy interface. This is going to go on my wife’s machine—she loathes learning new software, so the more handholding the better (or else it will just sit in the background).

While we’d rather not pay an exhorbinent amount, we don’t need it to be free/shareware.

Thanks~

*Time Machine requires that you have the target drive directly connected to the laptop. We’ve talked to Applecare and tried the workarounds on the net to no avail. It may work if we upgraded (twice), but that is not an option. If you think there is a solution we may have overlooked, great--but we've sunk a few hours into trying various commands and whatnot. This has even escaped Applecare.

As I'm sure Apple pointed out, your real problem is 10.5.8. You say that upgrading is not an option, but under 10.5 TM does not easily attach to non-TC network drives (although I do believe it is possible to force TM to do this through terminal commands, it is not possible using the GUI interface). If you upgrade, however, then TM's GUI allows you to use networked drives for backups.

to see if the network volumes then become visible in the TM's GUI. If so, then you may or may not be able to easily setup TM on the network drive. If TM will create its sparse.bundle, then your are good to go. But TM may not create the sparse.bundle on the network drive. If this happens then you can still force it to work by creating your own sparse.bundle, moving it to the network drive, and then telling TM to use it. All of this requires the use of "hdiutil" and "tmutil" terminal commands.

Edit: To create a 500GB sparse bundle use something like: (I can't really be sure what to use here since I'm not running 10.5.8 and thus the naming is just a guess...you can perhaps look at your system to see how the naming should go. TM in 10.5.8 also may allow most any names, as long as you specify the exact name in a "tmutil inheritbackup..." command.)

where FQDN is the name of the computer on the network (e.g., MyMac.private) and MAC
is the MAC address without the colons. Transfer this sparse bundle to the network drive using "dd", and set it as the TM destination using the appropriate "tmutil setdestination..." command.

Again, I don't even know if these terminal commands are available under 10.5.8.

Try CrashPlan which allows you to use their excellent software for free if you aren't backing up to their servers. Very simple interface, extremely reliable, and it does an excellent job of block level deduplication to minimize backup times and sizes while maximizing the number of file versions you can retain.

3) or you can pay money and use other things that have been suggested here already

rsync isn't nearly as powerful as modern backup utilities that do endless file versioning while requiring little additional backup space due to block-level deduplication. And as I mentioned, CrashPlan lets you use those powerful tools for free for local backups.

Rhythmdvl - In our Windows environment at my office, we treat images differently than backups. Images are large files that are mostly static, and are difficult to manage once you start making incremental versions of them. We use Acronis for occasional machine images, but real file backup software for daily use.

On OSX, due to the way the system is designed, this is a little bit less important. So long as you back up your users Home and Applications directories, you can pretty much restore quickly from a clean install. Unless you really need the ability to restore a recent image as quickly as possible, that system is adding extra complexity to your backup routine, which, IMHO, should be as simple and as hands-off as possible. If it makes you feel better, I'd suggest doing one image backup either with Disk Utility or CCC and archiving it, then use file level backups for the regular day-to-day backups.

May I ask why you are writing off cloud backups? In my experience they are among the most reliable and hands-off way of backing up simple user data, and it is extremely cheap with many providers.

Thanks for the information justperry...I have never used 10.5.8, as I moved from Linux servers to 10.6.8 server and thus did not know if tmutil was available in 10.5 -- that's why I wrote my caveat in the post. I assume that under 10.5 there must have been other terminal commands that could be used?

I know others are suggesting a variety of third-party backup programs...I wonder how these run under 10.5? In my opinion, the best option for the OP is to upgrade to 10.8 and then use TM for his/her network backups.

Thanks for the information justperry...I have never used 10.5.8, as I moved from Linux servers to 10.6.8 server and thus did not know if tmutil was available in 10.5 -- that's why I wrote my caveat in the post. I assume that under 10.5 there must have been other terminal commands that could be used?

I know others are suggesting a variety of third-party backup programs...I wonder how these run under 10.5? In my opinion, the best option for the OP is to upgrade to 10.8 and then use TM for his/her network backups.

Regards,
Switon

TM with network backups to a destination other than a Time Capsule or a drive connected directly to another Mac on the network are always a mixed bag, even on 10.8. The commands you suggest get some configurations working, but it is not supported, and software updates are prone to breaking compatibility at any time. I did this for about 5 years, and in practice, I had a couple of random failures where I had to reconfigure everything, and every major OS update broke the connection (and the old fixes would no longer work) so you were left with no backups until a solution became available. At at least one transition I ended up resetting my backups and starting over.

There is no reason that 3rd party backups can't do a perfectly good job. We still use Time Machine going to a USB drive on my iMac, but we also use CrashPlan which has required zero configuration hassles since we set it up years ago.

TM with network backups to a destination other than a Time Capsule or a drive connected directly to another Mac on the network are always a mixed bag, even on 10.8. The commands you suggest get some configurations working, but it is not supported, and software updates are prone to breaking compatibility at any time. I did this for about 5 years, and in practice, I had a couple of random failures where I had to reconfigure everything, and every major OS update broke the connection (and the old fixes would no longer work) so you were left with no backups until a solution became available. At at least one transition I ended up resetting my backups and starting over.

There is no reason that 3rd party backups can't do a perfectly good job. We still use Time Machine going to a USB drive on my iMac, but we also use CrashPlan which has required zero configuration hassles since we set it up years ago.

Hi zhenya,

Interesting that CrashPlan works so well with no hassles. Sounds like a good backup program. Does it use the rsync remote backup protocols?

It is also interesting that you say that TM network backups are a "mixed bag" on 10.8. Personally I have not had any trouble with TM backups on network drives under 10.8.2, but I guess I should cross my toes and hope that I don't have problems in the future.

I personally use several different backup schemes in combination, all the way from using "dd" for certain data files, "rsync" for others, TM for users's daily content generation, and CCC for the occasional creation of a bootable backup of the system volume for each Mac.

Interesting that CrashPlan works so well with no hassles. Sounds like a good backup program. Does it use the rsync remote backup protocols?

It is also interesting that you say that TM network backups are a "mixed bag" on 10.8. Personally I have not had any trouble with TM backups on network drives under 10.8.2, but I guess I should cross my toes and hope that I don't have problems in the future.

I personally use several different backup schemes in combination, all the way from using "dd" for certain data files, "rsync" for others, TM for users's daily content generation, and CCC for the occasional creation of a bootable backup of the system volume for each Mac.

Thanks for the information,
Switon

I don't know exactly what protocols Crashplan uses, but I doubt it is rsync as it appears to be much more advanced than that. It has been so flawless on our home machines that we are currently in a test period with it on some of our client machines at the office.

Good to hear that Time Machine is working for you well. I had long periods of time where it did for me, but I eventually got tired of having to expend a great deal of time at each update to OSX to ensure that it continued to work. Breaks my cardinal rule of backups which is 'hands off.'

almost true ... but TM utilizes symlinks which are native to unix systems. does crash-plan actually provide you with data deduplication on the ingest or data-at-rest?

I'm not sure if I understand your question, but my understanding of how CrashPlan works is that it scans every block before it is sent to the backup destination and compares that block against those it has already backed up. If it finds a match, it moves on to the next block. When it finds a unique block it is compressed, encrypted, and sent.